An Old War Gets a Fresh Treatment

When actor Conor Timmis set out to make Finnigan’s War, the documentary he is directing in Connecticut about the Korean War, he didn’t particularly intend to buck the conventions of war documentaries. He knew he wanted to tell the story of his grandfather, John Finnigan, who served in the war, but he didn’t have a clear vision of what the finished project would look like: “To be honest, I didn’t really know.”

But when Timmis, who might be best known for his acting work in Kreating Karloff, began to prepare, he found the war documentaries that he was watching admirable but not necessarily engaging. “Even though they’re really well-produced, you watch it once and you never want to watch it again,” he said. In his own work, he wanted to draw people in and attract a new audience. “Most war documentaries only appeal to white males from age 18 to 50,” he said. Timmis felt that the war was terribly neglected in education, and he wanted to fix that: “There are very few Korean War documentaries. The ones out there are excellent, but they’re for that one demographic.” He wanted something that would appeal to a wider audience, even and especially to teenagers, who often know little about the Korean War, which doesn’t even have its own museum. In fact, all proceeds from the documentary will go towards the creation of a Korean War museum in Springfield, IL.

So Timmis decided that part of Finnigan’s War would be comic art to illustrate the events described in the citations that accompany a soldier's Medal of Honor or a Silver Star. It was partly a monetary decision -- live-action recreations are a hit-and-miss affair, Timmis says. But it would also be a bid to grab the attention of a younger generation that is used to a particular form of entertainment. “Everything is so comic-book-centric. I want to make something that’s educational and entertaining at the same time,” he explained. He knows it’s a “ballsy” move, but he’s hoping to strike the right balance between innovation and respect for his subject. He said he imagines the final product looking like an illustrated sequence from the recent action movie Kick-Ass.

One of these illustrated sequences will use the citation for the Medal of Honor received posthumously by Pfc. Ralph E. Pomeroy. On October 15th, 1952, while using his machine gun to defend a position near Kumhwa (now in South Korea), he was severely injured. Out of ammunition, he picked up his scalding hot weapon and used it “like a baseball bat,” according to Timmis, and attacked the "enemy" even though the metal was so hot his hands fused to it. Timmis was lucky enough, he said, to receive permission from the Navy to film on board the ship named after Pomeroy, where he interviewed Pomeroy’s family in December.

Part of Timmis’ strategy to draw in the viewer is structuring the film so that segments are set up by his personal connection to the war: his grandfather, whose life was ripe for retelling. “It almost had a Forrest Gump quality to it,” said Timmis, calling it “cinematic.” Finnigan grew up an orphan in New York City and lied about his age to join the Merchant Marines. During World War II, he became a marine, but, strangely, fought in the Army during the Korean War. Timmis was looking over Finnigan’s discharge papers the other day and found that he was still technically in the marines at the end of the war: “Don’t ask me what that means.”

As Timmis read in preparation for the doc, he was struck by a neglected aspect of a war that was already neglected. He thought minorities had been overlooked, even denigrated. “They get a really bad rap,” he said, but “the black units always got the worst officers, the worst training, the worst equipment,” and were still often segregated, though the military was moving slowly to integrate. Despite the setbacks, black soldiers fought as well as any others. “You find a lot of instances where they’re fighting courageously,” Timmis said. “They’re risking combat and death and injury and they’re not even really that free in their own country.” In his research, a unit of black Army Rangers was especially helpful, Timmis said, which he thinks is because they feel as though their story hasn’t been told.

Race as a theme came up again in the case of Maj. Kurt Chew-Een Lee, who received the Navy Cross for battling the Chinese as a marine during the Korean War. Chew-Een Lee himself is of Chinese descent, and he faced intolerance and skepticism even within the military. Meeting him was “like meeting Achilles,” said Timmis. “It’s almost like meeting a movie star, except they’re in the military.”

Timmis sees another problem with conventional war documentaries: “They’re so sad and depressing, you watch them and you’re good,” he said, meaning they don’t encourage more than one viewing. But he intends to make a film that people will want to come back to, so he’s making a special effort to lighten Finnigan’s War with humor: “Whenever I talk to these veterans, I ask them about the most irreverent, funny thing that happened to them.” It is one more way in which Timmis has set out to breathe new life into the genre and make history feel alive again.